


like ferns spike up on graves

by procrastinatingbookworm



Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [19]
Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: (but not really), Gen, Jewish Holidays, Knitting, Suicidal Thoughts, and You get diaspora feelings and You get diaspora feelings, fantasy judaism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-11
Updated: 2020-12-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:55:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28004277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/procrastinatingbookworm/pseuds/procrastinatingbookworm
Summary: Tiso reflects: an interlude of no particular consequence.
Relationships: Minor or Background Relationship(s), The Hollow Knight | Pure Vessel & Tiso
Series: Hello, I'm good for nothing - will you love me just the same? [19]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1957039
Comments: 12
Kudos: 59





	like ferns spike up on graves

It’s been a long time since Tiso’s kept track of the date. He’s been traveling alone for a long time, hungry and thirsty and tired, resting when it was safe and walking when it wasn’t. The days blurred past.

They still blur past—even more so now, without a way to tell day or night even when Tiso is under the sky.

It bothers him. Of course it bothers him. The holidays have been given significance by way of tradition, but that significance is tied to the days themselves. He can’t observe the holidays if he doesn’t know what day it is.

And there’s nothing he can do about it, either. No one keeps the Dreaming calendar outside of ant colonies and moth tribes, much less anyone in this colonized shell of a kingdom.

Tiso remembers the harvest festival just before his colony collapsed. In single-file, they’d left the anthill, digging individual holes into the earth and sleeping under the stars, in honor of the time their people spent without colonies.

He doesn’t remember much, after that. He certainly doesn’t remember how long it’s been.

Given time, he could make a guess based on the stars, but there are no stars in Hallownest, and no way to leave Hallownest, and no Dreaming calendars.

The Radiance might know, but Tiso knows enough about trauma to figure that she probably isn’t open for questions at the moment.

At a loss, mind wandering, Tiso weaves. It’s different than weaving two-handed. Clumsier, but simpler—working the thread between four fingers instead of eight.

It was a moth who taught him how. A Seer, with a tremor in her forelimbs. Her wings had fanned the air as she bent over Tiso, setting the thread he worked with aflutter. There was no stillness to her, not for a moment.

Tiso licks at his forearm and rakes it through his antennae, smoothing down the hairs.

Across the room, Holly is watching him. It’s barely noticeable, given that their face is an expressionless mask, unchanging except for the droop of their eyes when they’re asleep, but they have lifted their head slightly, and turned it toward him. 

“This would be much easier if you had antennae,” he tells them. “We’d understand each other much better.”

Holly’s head tilts, just slightly.

“So I’m making you a scarf, instead,” Tiso continues. He glances down at his meagre work. “It’ll take me a while, but I’m going to.”

Holly tilts their head at a slightly different angle. One of their horns scrapes against the wall. They drag their hand up from amidst the mass of blankets and sign.  _ Why? _

Well, what is he supposed to say to that? The  _ truth _ ?

“I’d make a blanket, but that would take me even longer,” Tiso says, shrugging his good shoulder. 

Holly settles their head back down, tucking their arm into the blankets.

That was a good enough answer, apparently.

Tiso goes back to his weaving.

The wet season had just begun, when Tiso fled his colony. He remembers that.

He doesn’t remember when he stopped counting days.

Maybe he should start again.


End file.
